Ian Cowie was named Consumer Affairs Journalist of the Year in the
London Press Club Awards 2012. He has been head of personal finance at
Telegraph Media Group since 2008, having been personal finance editor
since 1989. He joined the paper in 1986. He is @iancowie on Twitter.

Younger people might even have more immediate needs for the cash, such as starting a family or buying a home rather than investing it irrevocably for decades ahead. Then, to put the tin lid on it, when they do reach retirement age and can get their hands on these savings, hundreds of thousands will discover that all they have achieved is to reduce their entitlement to means-tested benefits.

There’s no need to take my word for this. The experts above calculate that a person on half-average earnings who saves for 45 years would have a pension £82,000 in an ‘aggregator scheme’. However, this would fall to as little as £61,000 in a ‘pot follows member’ scheme due to high fees and variable investment returns.

But both sums are lower than the savings needed to match what pensioners can receive today without giving up any expenditure. For example, the current Pension Credit – a minimum income to which everyone over state pension age is entitled – is £142.70 a week, or £7,420 a year. A 65 year old man would need a pension pot of around £204,000 to buy an inflation linked income of that level. For a woman it would be £220,000.

Even if you discount the basic state pension of £107.45 a week and just look at the difference – that is, £142.70 minus £107.45 or £35.25 – you’d still need a pension pot of £50,600 for a man and £54,480 for a woman.

“People’s lives aren’t that simple. Defaults can work to a limited degree but you do then need to engage at an individual level to make sure that people are making the right decisions for their personal circumstances. For some people this will mean saving a lot more than the default contribution, for others it may mean not saving at all.”

As so often with pensions, the devil is in the detail. The truth is a lot more complex than the Government propaganda. While forced saving or auto-enrolment will reduce the number of people entitled to claim means-tested benefits and is good for the State, that does not mean it is in the best interests of individual savers – a key test for any private sector pension provider or financial adviser.